Alex Marquez<\/a> would win three times in 2025 and offer his older brother a consistent challenge in the first half of the campaign, ultimately finishing runner-up in the standings.<\/p>\nWhile expected to perform well on the GP24 coming into the 2025 season, the level he displayed across the campaign came as one of the biggest surprises of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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All of this earned him a factory bike for the 2026 season, but it has not begun in a similar fashion.<\/p>\n
He failed to finish in the Thailand season-opener, was 8.9s from the win in sixth in a shortened Brazil race, while in America he was 11.253s away from the leader in seventh.<\/p>\n
April break a \u201cpositive\u201d for Alex Marquez<\/p>\n
After three rounds, he is eighth in the standings on 28 points, which is 59 less than he had at the same stage last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s just we are struggling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a little bit [further] back compared to our competitors, especially me, who has a particular style.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m struggling quite a lot this year. We are trying to make some steps. I\u2019m motivated to make the steps forward and be more competitive, but we are missing a few things still.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we need to keep working, keep giving our comments, and I believe that Ducati will do a lot of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never stop working, so, for sure, there will arrive a moment in the season when we will make a step.\u201d<\/p>\n
Racing doesn\u2019t resume until the Spanish Grand Prix at the end of April, following the postponement of the Qatar round due to the ongoing war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Alex Marquez believes this is a benefit for himself and Ducati in order to further analyse its current situation.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s not frustrating [after what happened last year].<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to keep working and I\u2019m motivated to take another step forward. I feel it\u2019s close, but we\u2019re missing something.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think not racing in Qatar right now is positive; it will let us analyse things better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Marquez admits he is \u201cstruggling quite a lot\u201d on Ducati\u2019s 2026 MotoGP bike, having begun the campaign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[8454,64,63,8455,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-576770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-alex-marquez","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-gresini-racing-motogp","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}